Saturday, January 17, 2009

Czech Artist Commemorates EU With Stereotypes

Czech artist David Cerny has put together a controversial sculpture to commemorate the European Union. Each country is represented by a stereotype: Romania has Dracula, Sweden has IKEA, France is on strike. Not surprisingly, more than a few countries are less than pleased. For some reason, Bulgaria as a squat toilet left a few Bulgarian art lovers cold... I would be surprised if Germans appreciated the swastika turned autobahn.

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Mr Černý was supposed to create a map of the Czech Republic and appoint another 26 European artists to create a map of their respective EU country. Instead, he made a mystification (a hoax) as he and his three co-workers quietly invented all the maps themselves and sometimes in a very sarcastic way. After his work had been presented, journalist soon realized that this was a mystification, since some of the alleged European authors didn't exist at all and others didn't know anything about this project. Also the nature of the sculpture caused a little upheaval because some countries (Bulgaria especially) didn't like their maps. Mr Černý explained that he'd wanted to see if Europe can embrace self-irony and is able to look at itself without bias or boast. He also apologized to the Czech government for deceiving them and stated that he would give all the money back, saying he had never been thinking of keeping them.